


Untold

by SharpestRose



Series: Gravity and Levity [3]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth doesn't tell her daughter a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untold

"Mother?" Sarah-Anne asks. She's perched on the end of her parents' bed, one skinny leg drawn up and her sharp chin resting on her knee. Elizabeth looks up from the book she is reading over by the window and holds back a sigh at the sight of the knee-length pants under Sarah-Anne's skirt. If Elizabeth has told her elder daughter once that thirteen is too old for such getup then she has told her a thousand times.

It's Will's fault. He spoils them all rotten; the two boys and the two girls and especially their mother. Elizabeth would feel angry, if she ever had the ability to conjure annoyance at her husband. But she can't, so she doesn't.

"Yes, dear?" Elizabeth answers he daughter now, leaving the conversation on proper clothing for another day. Let the girl wear trousers if she wishes to, lord knows there is enough time for dresses once she grows up.

"Who's this?" Sarah-Anne holds up a page torn from a book, the creases carved deep from long years of folding. "It was in with Father's old papers. It's an etching."

"Oh," Elizabeth says, rising to her feet and walking over to take the sheet from Sarah-Anne's hand. "That's James. Your father and I became friends with him him back before you were born. You knew him when you were a child, though I doubt you remember him now."

Sarah-Anne nods. "I... _think_ I do. I remember I thought his wig was funny."

Elizabeth presses her lips together in an effort to hold back a smile. "Yes. He wasn't terribly fond of it himself, poor man. Said he'd forgotten how to be himself without it, said he turned into Commodore Norrington when it was on his head."

Sarah-Anne looks again at the etching, surprise widening her dark dark eyes.

"That's _Commodore Norrington_? You knew him? Why I didn't know that? Why don't you and Father ever _tell_ us these things! Norrington's very famous. Liam and Josh never shut up about him." Sarah-Anne's tone as she speaks of her brothers is the voice of longsuffering exasperation. "Norrington this and Norrington that and Norrington the other." She looks up at her mother, smirking. "I can't _believe_ you've never told me."

Elizabeth shakes her head, biting her lip as she looks down at the image. It doesn't look much like the face in her memory, though perhaps that was never the point.

"Didn't seem like there was anything to tell. He vanished when you were just on five years old... though I suspect men like him always do, in the end. Their legend becomes too big to sustain a real person, the centre can't hold."

"So you don't know what happened to him? Not at _all_?"

"I have my theories." With a final glance, Elizabeth folds the paper along the worn crease-line and hands it back to Sarah-Anne.

"So what other secrets are you keeping from your children?" Sarah-Anne unfolds the page again and traces the bold line of the Commodore's hat with a fingertip. "What other larger-than-life characters did you know and never thought to mention? Did you ever meet a heathen priest? Or a pirate? Or a princess? Now I'm going to suspect you and Father had all kinds of adventures, if you won't even tell your daughter about some stodgy old Navy man."

Elizabeth simply smiles, shaking her head and gesturing for the girl to go outside and play with her siblings. "Never you mind, Miss. Now go, and don't go spilling to your brothers either. I'll tell them when they're old enough..." Elizabeth's voice drops to a quieter volume as Sarah-Anne gives a conspiratorial chuckle and skips away, rich with secret knowledge. "...children deserve to have impossibly wonderful heroes."

She turns and goes back to her book, pausing for a moment to stare out the window at the calm blue eternity of the horizon and sky. In a gesture left over from young days now passed, she chews again on her lower lip. She thinks about men and legends and escapes, and stories she will tell her daughter when the child is older, and then she smiles.


End file.
